ARMPAC

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), chair of the stalled House Ethics Committee, has said that the committee will "not investigate a 15-month-old complaint about DeLay's role in alleged illegal campaign contributions in Texas" because such an investigation would duplicate Earle's work.

Westar Energy, Inc., a Kansas-based utility company, and three of its employees have agreed to pay the Federal Election Commission more than $40,000 in fines to settle accusations that they used improper fundraising techniques to contribute to Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay's political action committee ARMPAC.

The Bureau of National Affairs reports today that a Federal Election Commission audit of Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority PAC has revealed that "soft" money was innaproppriately used. According to the report, ARMPAC owes $203,483 to its soft-money or "non-federal" account, Kenneth P. Doyle writes.

Jean Schmidt, the Republican candidate for the special election in Ohio's second congressional district (the seat was left vacant with Rob Portman's appointment to US Trade Representative), received two $5,000 contributions from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC on June 23rd and 27th, respectively.

With all the scandals in Ohio -- Bob Ney, Coingate, etc. -- do Ohioans want another representative whose in DeLay's pocket?

A casino-rich tribe wrote checks for at least $55,000 to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's political groups, but the donations were never publicly disclosed and the tribe was directed to divert the money to other groups that helped Republicans, tribal documents show.

Yesterday, Meghan blogged about Phil Shenon's New York Times piece on an audit of DeLay's leadership PAC, ARMPAC. When I saw the story my immediate reaction that DeLay and his handlers released the story early to take the sting out of the real news. The spin they put on it was that it involved the committee was "cleared" -- in fact that's the headline the Times put on the story.

The Federal Elections Commission plans to release the report of an audit that was done on Tom DeLay's political action committee ARMPAC, according to Philip Shenon of The New York Times. The audit looked into allegations of "illegal contributions" received in 2001 and 2002.